Alastor plays and ranks the whole series! Mission Complete! ...For now.

[Alastor15243]

3 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

Yes. Do you think RD!Ike travelling dozens of metres in the amount of time Lucia dropped a few cm a plot hole because no human can travel anywhere near that distance? Not saying Soren is as fast as RD!Ike but there's no reason why RD!Ike would be so much faster than everyone else while everyone else is on par with average human speed. 

Then I'm sorry, no, the game is definitely contradicting itself when it comes to how fast things are.

The game says that the boat is at least as fast as, if not faster than, raven laguz.

Raven laguz have 8 movement. Soren has 5.

There's clearly a contradiction here. Whether between gameplay and story, or between ships and pedestrians, the game is clearly not putting much effort into making sure travel times follow any real rules.

 

EDIT:

@Jotari

  

2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

The Zihark question could be resolved by assuming he joined the milita before Laguz hunts were outlawed, and then once they were he just stuck around with them because hey, it's still a paycheque. Either that or he wanted to make sure the milita weren't doing any illegal hunts.

I don't think that works. His joining was apparently relatively recent, and the implication is that he hasn't seen any laguz yet on the vigilante watch. The vigilante guy talks to and about him like he's a new recruit.

Edited June 26, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Icelerate]

2 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Then I'm sorry, no, the game is definitely contradicting itself when it comes to how fast things are.

The game says that the boat is at least as fast as, if not faster than, raven laguz.

Raven laguz have 8 movement. Soren has 5.

There's clearly a contradiction here. Whether between gameplay and story, or between ships and pedestrians, the game is clearly not putting much effort into making sure travel times follow any real rules.

 

EDIT:

@Jotari

  

I don't think that works. His joining was apparently relatively recent, and the implication is that he hasn't seen any laguz yet on the vigilante watch. The vigilante guy talks to and about him like he's a new recruit.

Ok that is odd. How in the world is a ship supposed to be anywhere near as fast as an ordinary bird, let alone raven laguz? That's really dumb. I agree that raven laguz should be much faster than any foot unit barring perhaps swordmasters or thieves. So does this mean PoR isn't the beacon of writing as some make it out to be? 

What chapter does the game make such a claim? If that's the case, why didn't the ship just outrun the ravens? 

[Alastor15243]

5 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

Ok that is odd. How in the world is a ship supposed to be anywhere near as fast as an ordinary bird, let alone raven laguz? That's really dumb. I agree that raven laguz should be much faster than any foot unit barring perhaps swordmasters or thieves. So does this mean PoR isn't the beacon of writing as some make it out to be? 

What chapter does the game make such a claim? If that's the case, why didn't the ship just outrun the ravens? 

This chapter, Chapter 12. Nasir said his plan was to outrun the ravens, but the ravens were actually luring them into a reef to trap them, hence why they got caught. But he, an experienced sailor, seemed pretty confident that had that not happened, he could have avoided them catching up to him. He at bare minimum seemed to think it was physically possible.

Edited June 26, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Eltosian Kadath]

40 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

 

Also, where did Eltosian come to the conclusion that the distance Soren traveled was 55-90 miles? 

He traveled 3 days, times some varied estimates for how fast human can generally walk in a day. The lowest estimate comes from roughly early renaissance daily marching speeds (I want to say from the 100 years war, but I am going by memory for this one), with a couple benchmarks in between, 20 is closer to average modern marching speeds, roughly 25 a day was the speed of the Athenian forced march at the battle of Marathon, and the extraordinary speeds achieved by Stonewall Jackson's "foot-cavalry" was 30 miles a day, and basic google searches made clear that these were in the ballpark, as that put the expected distance a healthy human can walk in a day between 20-30 miles (so 60-90 range, and reading through some extra descriptions that 30 mile mark is for those that are extremely fit). It is possible for a human to go faster in a day if they had to, but such bursts of speed aren't the kind of thing the human body can generally sustain for multiple days without serious repercussions, additionally Soren was described as walking, not running and Soren shows no indication of the kind of exhaustion one would expect if he was pushing his body like that.

Edited June 26, 2020 by Eltosian Kadath

[Jotari]

10 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...And giving that timeline another look to double-check... yeah... originally Phoenicis was home to both bird tribes, but due to “differences within the bird tribes”, the ravens all left Phoenicis, in a mass racial exodus, to form Kilvas.

 

Where are my dolphin laguz, Intelligent Systems?

 

 

Tibarns ending does mention how the bird tribes reunite once more into a singular kingdom, so there is that.

And Dolphin laguz were never giong to be a thing for gameplay reasons. No point in having a unit that's useless when transformed and even more useless when transformed outside of a handful of sea maps. TO get something like that we need a game fully designed around marine combat (Pirate!Emblem when IS?)

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Okay, that's interesting... this CG suggests that the game map is understating the dragons' size, as opposed to slightly overstating the size of units like most of the game does.

 

 

Oh yes, the game canonically has dragon laguz as more massive than what we see in game. Like when Kurthnaga shows up in Radiant Dawn everyone's like "Wow he's way bigger than a mere wyvern" despite wyvern lord wyverns looking bigger than him in battle cutscenes. Of course dragon laguz being so big does invoke the question of how big Rajaion is as he's meant to pass for a wyvern and we even see him in CGS where he looks much smaller than these red dragons.  Maybe Rajaion had dragon dwarfism?

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

 

 

...Soren and Lethe were arguing and dropping slurs at each other when they first met. Surely Lethe would have wanted to say something then if she knew he was “filthy branded scum”? Am I expected to believe she's racist against beorc but socially-conscious about branded, who both beorc and laguz are supposed to treat worst of all?

 

Also can't remember what Path of Radiance says on the matter, but at least Radiant Dawn suggests they can sense branded but there aren't enough branded around for them to know what they're sensing. So it freaks them out and makes them more hostile (allegedly again as we see basically zero laguz hating on branded in the series) but they wouldn't have the knowledge to throw out any specific insults. Probably the best example in real life, funny enough, would be cinematic techniques to highlight a character as a villain before they're villainous. We already know we don't like them but unless you've analyzed the movie or know a good deal about cinematography, you wouldn't know why.

21 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

 I don't think that works. His joining was apparently relatively recent, and the implication is that he hasn't seen any laguz yet on the vigilante watch. The vigilante guy talks to and about him like he's a new recruit.

Suspecting the group that formerly hunted legally might now continue to hunt illegally still works as an explanation.

Edited June 26, 2020 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

3 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Suspecting the group that formerly hunted legally might now continue to hunt illegally still works as an explanation.

True, it all comes down to exactly what the "all but" in Ranulf's comment about how laguz hunts have "all but stopped" meant. I still think it would've been cooler if he had been part of the Daein army though.

4 minutes ago, Jotari said:

And Dolphin laguz were never giong to be a thing for gameplay reasons. No point in having a unit that's useless when transformed and even more useless when transformed outside of a handful of sea maps. TO get something like that we need a game fully designed around marine combat (Pirate!Emblem when IS?)

Yeah, of course. But It seems like such a bizarre thing storywise for there to not be. I mean, Ashunera made sea creatures, right? She made counterparts of birds, why wouldn't she make counterparts of the sea-dwellers?

6 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Also can't remember what Path of Radiance says on the matter, but at least Radiant Dawn suggests they can sense branded but there aren't enough branded around for them to know what they're sensing. So it freaks them out and makes them more hostile (allegedly again as we see basically zero laguz hating on branded in the series) but they wouldn't have the knowledge to throw out any specific insults. Probably the best example in real life, funny enough, would be cinematic techniques to highlight a character as a villain before they're villainous. We already know we don't like them but unless you've analyzed the movie or know a good deal about cinematography, you wouldn't know why.

That would explain Vika's behavior around Micaiah.

6 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Oh yes, the game canonically has dragon laguz as more massive than what we see in game. Like when Kurthnaga shows up in Radiant Dawn everyone's like "Wow he's way bigger than a mere wyvern" despite wyvern lord wyverns looking bigger than him in battle cutscenes. Of course dragon laguz being so big does invoke the question of how big Rajaion is as he's meant to pass for a wyvern and we even see him in CGS where he looks much smaller than these red dragons.  Maybe Rajaion had dragon dwarfism?

I'm pretty sure he's stated in-game as being massive by wyvern standards. I guess I'll have Ena or Nasir fight him so we can at leas see how their in-battle models compare, even though I know black dragons are supposed to be bigger.

[Jotari]

2 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

That would explain Vika's behavior around Micaiah.

 

Yes, that's exactly what that base convo was trying to express.

17 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

He traveled 3 days, times some varied estimates for how fast human can generally walk in a day. The lowest estimate comes from roughly early renaissance daily marching speeds (I want to say from the 100 years war, but I am going by memory for this one), with a couple benchmarks in between, 20 is closer to average modern marching speeds, roughly 25 a day was the speed of the Athenian forced march at the battle of Marathon, and the extraordinary speeds achieved by Stonewall Jackson's "foot-cavalry" was 30 miles a day, and basic google searches made clear that these were in the ballpark, as that put the expected distance a healthy human can walk in a day between 20-30 miles (so 60-90 range, and reading through some extra descriptions that 30 mile mark is for those that are extremely fit). It is possible for a human to go faster in a day if they had to, but such bursts of speed aren't the kind of thing the human body can generally sustain for multiple days without serious repercussions, additionally Soren was described as walking, not running and Soren shows no indication of the kind of exhaustion one would expect if he was pushing his body like that.

I've gone to the Chapter 4 script and the word walk doesn't appear anywhere there. So unless it's specified somewhere else, it seems its a bit of an assumption on our part that Soren was walking. It's possible he took a horse, or even more problematic for our calculations, a pegasus taxi.

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Yes, that's exactly what that base convo was trying to express.

Which is weird, if you think about it. Why do they get that completely baseless gut feeling? According to Yune, the whole "laguz who mate with beorc lose their powers" thing was completely an accident. That's already a stretch, but to also accidentally have their children inspire a gut feeling of revulsion and dread within laguz? If they could just smell them, and their own bigotry against interracial dating did the rest, that would be one thing, but having it be an instinctual feeling of dread honestly has its own problems that are even worse.

Edited June 26, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Eltosian Kadath]

4 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I've gone to the Chapter 4 script and the word walk doesn't appear anywhere there. So unless it's specified somewhere else, it seems its a bit of an assumption on our part that Soren was walking. It's possible he took a horse, or even more problematic for our calculations, a pegasus taxi.

From what I remember cavalry speeds were usually around the 30-40 miles a day range, but the Pony Express was able to make 60-70 miles a day by switching horses every 10 miles (and is an extreme pace to make without riding any horses to death), although I doubt he has to resources to make that kind of pace. No idea for Pegasus speed.

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Which is weird, if you think about it. Why do they get that completely baseless gut feeling? According to Yune, the whole "laguz who mate with beorc lose their powers" thing was completely an accident. That's already a stretch, but to also accidentally have their children inspire a gut feeling of revulsion and dread within laguz? If they could just smell them, and their own bigotry against interracial dating did the rest, that would be one thing, but having it be an instinctual feeling of dread honestly has its own problems that are even worse.

It don't think it's that big an issue. It's hitting the uncanny valley for laguz, only with smell instead of sight. They're smelling something that all their senses are telling them is a beorc, yet at the same time is telling them is definitely not a beorc. It's freaky to put it in a single word. The better question for the branded is where the bloody brand comes from if not the goddess (I guess we've seen blood branding in other games in the series with non laguz in humans, but there it's always intentional and is not treated as the same thing as a Tellius branded). And even more bizzarely, how can it skip certain generations?

5 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

From what I remember cavalry speeds were usually around the 30-40 miles a day range, but the Pony Express was able to make 60-70 miles a day by switching horses every 10 miles (and is an extreme pace to make without riding any horses to death), although I doubt he has to resources to make that kind of pace. No idea for Pegasus speed.

Looking over the chapter again, Soren fled the capital at the same time as a massive number of civilians did. Greil is quite confident that they're the only ones this far out that even know the war has started yet. So combined that with the utter lack of refugees flooding the roads I think we can conclude that regardless of how Soren traveled, he did so in the fastest manner available to him. Though this would have been a great point to introduce Marcia as aplayable character to help curb that early game dearth of characters you complained about. Granted having a pegasus prior to Greil's death couldn't not be included in the optional conversations given how useful it could be for getting Elincia or Rolf and Mist away from the battle.

Edited June 26, 2020 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

23 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I've gone to the Chapter 4 script and the word walk doesn't appear anywhere there. So unless it's specified somewhere else, it seems its a bit of an assumption on our part that Soren was walking. It's possible he took a horse, or even more problematic for our calculations, a pegasus taxi.

Given that Greil comments something along the lines of them being "probably the first to know about the war in these parts", that does imply he was traveling faster. But who was he traveling with? The mercenary company he was training with? Did they give him a lift all that way? The flight to Gallia is implied to be almost entirely on foot for the footsoldiers like Gatrie, so it's doubtful they had horses to spare, making it unlikely Soren had a horse of his own to ride.

Edited June 26, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Given that Greil comments something along the lines of them being "probably the first to know about the war in these parts", that does imply he was traveling faster. But who was he traveling with? The mercenary company he was training with? Did they give him a lift all that way? The flight to Gallia is implied to be almost entirely on foot for the footsoldiers like Gatrie, so it's doubtful they had horses to spare, making it unlikely Soren had a horse of his own to ride.

There's a difference between Soren moving around by himself and the entire gang fleeing to Gallia. Soren doesn't have to worry about the likes of Rolf or Mist keeping up. He doesn't even need to worry about supplies and especially weapons. Money and speed are the only things he needs to measure.

[Alastor15243]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

There's a difference between Soren moving around by himself and the entire gang fleeing to Gallia. Soren doesn't have to worry about the likes of Rolf or Mist keeping up. He doesn't even need to worry about supplies and especially weapons. Money and speed are the only things he needs to measure.

Yes, but my point is things seem to indicate he doesn't have his own horse, so where'd he get one for the journey, and where'd it go?

[Alastor15243]

Path of Radiance Day 10: Chapter 13

I just realized that if you do a map without anyone dying, Soren will actually smile when giving his report. That's... that's adorable.

Okay, so looks like yes, I did get the seraph robe last map. Thank goodness.

Upon checking Ike's averages again, I realized he would have actually been better off with the soldier band than the knight band. He's actually already on track to cap strength normally, with a sizeable buffer too, at base. So even though a +5% HP growth is tiny given how high growth rates in that stat usually are, it's better than boosting a stat he's already gonna cap. I'm gonna want Ike to cap HP too if possible, and had I gotten the soldier band on him quick enough, that might have been possible with just one stat booster. But hey, I have two seraph robes now, and if I have to use both of them on Ike, I'll use both of them on Ike. Ike's the only one who needs capped stats for this game, rather than the next. Because if what I saw of the Black Knight's stats is correct, an Ike with capped speed, defense and HP should be able to go at least a little on the offensive in that fight without risking death. Depends on how much Mist can heal for by that point, though.

Speaking of which, Mist finally has her double-water support with Mordecai. Let's check that out...

...Did people normally put their clothes out to dry on clotheslines on ships during [insert indistinct period of time all medieval fantasy seems to be based on before adding magic and goblins]? Maybe I only find it odd because of this specific situation that happened where Mist had to chase after one of her scarves. She was particularly lucky Mordecai caught it before it went overboard, though since this is a support, they don't mention they're on a ship.

I have a feeling she wants to thank Mordecai for saving her life back in Chapter 8, but is still too intimidated to do it, based on what she said last chapter.

Anyway, I was wondering who “youth” and “woman” were supposed to be on the info screen, until I remembered they don't address the merchants by name for some reason in info conversations in this game.

This minor subplot that starts here is kind of amusing, but also kind of dumb. Basically, the two merchant twins, Jorge and Daniel, are playing some Fire-Emblem-esque tabletop war game and are going to Ike to ask for advice about real-life versions of their issues in the game, hoping that how Ike would handle it for real would be useful for how they could handle it in-game.

...The thing is that the advice they ask for is always, like. ridiculously accurate to the battles they're about to be thrown into, so this is a way to give advice to the player, through Ike.

Of course, it's pretty basic information, and I'm surprised they waited until this map to give it. But I always found it a fun way to give the player advice in-story, especially since they have Ike give the advice so that he doesn't look like an idiot for needing to be told this at this stage. But... it's... also kind of obnoxiously convenient how topical the advice winds up becoming. Like, Jorge and Daniel just so happened to be in a war game scenario with a ship with three plank crossing points, just like we're about to get?

The second one, which is also 2 stars (again, one star is just story and flavor, two stars is useful information, 3 stars is something like an item or unit), has Aimee revealing her attraction to Ike, and Ike is just hilariously un-interested. Remember that time a few years back where Ike managed to beat Camilla in a Fire Emblem Heroes voting gauntlet, and everyone hailed him as a “thotslayer”? I mean... it's kinda fitting that he wound up being the one called that, because I'm pretty sure if this game came out around that time, he'd have gotten that reputation from this, too.

But anyway... I didn't get anything useful from that. It was just Aimee ineffectually flirting with Ike while he was not interested at all. Was something useful said in the Japanese version? Why was that labeled 2 stars?

Moving on to Jill.

...Oh thank goodness, I was worried that was the last we were going to see of Jill the Hilariously Ineffectual Villain. Looks like we get to see a little bit more, with her making up dumb excuses for why she's staying on the boat.

Hilariously though, she says that only now is the shore too far away to reach, and like... yeah, I can't believe I forgot about the whole “one month passing” thing when Jill showed up. But yes, this is absolutely ridiculous. Were the narrations and actual story written by different people? The narration is the only place where the two months the voyage is said to take are mentioned. If they had been vaguer about how long it takes, I wouldn't have batted an eye at this...

...Okay no, I definitely would have still batted an eye at how long a wyvern can stay in the air just by sheer distance.

...Also, didn't she show up from the opposite direction the ship had been coming from? What the fuck has she been doing to tail us?

Ike actually says a line that I was hoping was going to call her on her bullshit and exposit something about wyverns having incredible stamina, but Jill outright states “no wyvern could fly that far without resting”.

But yeah, it's pretty clear that she's already been shaken by witnessing Prince Kurthnaga's kindness (as she's going to talk about later), and at this point she's battling with her inner demons while putting on a racist tsundere act to rival Lethe herself.

Oooh, what's this? A conversation without Ike?

Ah yes, this starting up a two-conversation (I believe) story arc about the three green-haired brothers coming up with the triangle attack. It's a weird one, because you have to choose bows for Oscar when he promotes, because you can only use it when they're all using bows.

...Nope, Ike's watching this from afar, so yes, he is in this conversation. This isn't an exception to that rule.

Honestly, I really wish this game didn't have these stupid alterations to growth rates when holding weapons and fighting enemies. I get that it's only one point per 20 levels, but it still frustrates the hell out of me that I can't, say, use a steel sword without making my speed and defense worse.

Anyway, nothing particularly important is for sale today, so there's not much point dawdling here.

So we get some interesting exposition about the political climate of Begnion, and then we meet with Tanith, who, for the first time, I'm actually going to use seriously. I wasn't going to, but then some things occurred to me:

1: Earth element

2: Can support with both Oscar and Marcia

...Yeah, that, combined with her reinforcements skill... I'm gonna have some fun with her.

Anyway, a generic pegasus knight shows up with a hair and armor color scheme reminding me a lot of the FE6 pegasus knights, particularly Shanna, announcing that “crows” have attacked the apostle. Take note: they use the term “laguz”, even when describing laguz trying to kill the apostle, which is a pretty nice touch, and a good indication that at least the soldiers loyal to the apostle are less racist than Begnion proper.

Tanith proceeds to show contempt for “their kind”, but in fairness, you could read that as her talking about pirates specifically, given she goes on to say “they fancy themselves pirates without a ship, but they're thieves plain and simple.”

Even then, though, that's... yeah, I think it goes without saying that if this were real life, Laguz were real, and Tanith tweeted anything like that... she'd probably want to burn her phone within the next three hours.

Hahahahahahahaha! And now we get the news that the apostle has wandered off somewhere on her own. Now, the great thing about this is that this is arguably even funnier before we know that the apostle is a 10-year-old girl. Just hearing that, you can tell that we're definitely getting someone who's going to be weird.

Alright, so... this game seems to use the terms “crows” and “ravens” interchangeably, or maybe I'm missing some subtle bit of writing where only people who don't know much about them call them crows instead of ravens? I'll have to pay more attention. I just know that in this chapter, Ike called them ravens (correct) while the Begnion pegasus knight called them crows (incorrect).

And then we get some amusing lines where Soren says they should help the pegasus knights save the Apostle's ship before quickly revealing he just opportunistically wants to get the apostle in their debt, they go off to help, and Elincia says “Give them... Give them a sound thrashing!”

Tanith calls them ravens again when just a little while ago she called them crows. So it looks like at least some characters use the terms interchangeably, when I'm pretty sure that isn't true in real life.

And now we see Astrid and Gatrie! Astrid is probably one of the best Ests in the series, what with her ability to easily do safe chip damage with canto and get double exp, and I got an absurdly rng-blessed one on my last playthrough of this game, which was super fun. As for Gatrie, amazingly he's just as untouchable now as he was before! I can count only a handful of non-magical enemies capable of doing more damage than his 17 defense.

...That suggests this map is going to be really easy as long as I'm paying attention, but as I said, I fucked up pretty badly here on my last playthrough.

I'm a little nervous about having to rush in to such an un-secured area to ensure Astrid's survival on turn one, but thankfully a shove and a smite will get Ike exactly where he needs to be to recruit Astrid, and then Astrid can recruit Gatrie. I think Gatrie has dialogue with other Greil Mercenaries if you talk to him while he's green, but we're obviously not doing that. I'll also be sending Lethe and Titania in to do whatever they can to plug up some of those planks on turn one.

What the heck, I'll check out that Gatrie dialogue now.

Oh wow, a lot of this is pretty charming. There was a weird line where Gatrie referred to Greil as “your father, Commander Greil” when talking to Ike, which seems... ridiculously as-you-know-y, but other than that, I love this. One thing I'd do differently is maybe have someone ask him what happened to Shinon, because it seems weird that they left together and are apparently good friends, but just... went their separate ways when it came to getting new work.

The Astrid recruitment conversation, on the other hand, is... weird. It doesn't really say anything to suggest that Astrid's going to change who she's taking orders from or anything. It's mostly a repeat of her opening dialogue.

...And the conversation with Gatrie doesn't really seem like it would do anything either. These feel more like just... conversations you'd have, with units who are already blue. But at any rate, they're both recruited, and while I'd love to have Gatrie block off one of these bridges, I'm gonna have him sit on the defense tile just in case the enemy gets lucky enough to kill the green soldier currently blocking the stairs.

Also, I may have made a terrible mistake bringing only one thief and no chest keys. And the worst part was that I had chest keys, and specifically put them back in my convoy for until I decided I'd need them. I've got 10 turns, 7 chests, and one thief, on a ship crawling with enemies. I may wind up needing to let the ravens steal some of the treasures in order to save time.

We get a scene with Naesala, and it's hilarious how much of an asshole he is. What a douche. And now he's just hanging out right outside of the selectable battlefield, watching the fireworks.

Meanwhile, the enemies are prioritizing green units, so there's little concern of dying on the first turn, but... yeah, Astrid was a green unit just at the beginning of the turn, so I have little doubt she'd be dead right now if I hadn't used those shove and smite strategies to get Ike there on turn one. Gotta say, of all the skills they could have given Mordecai, smite is probably the best when it comes to making sure he stays useful even before he transforms. Getting to push a unit 2 spaces is really handy.

This map has me nervous, mostly due to how busy it is. There are just so many enemies doing so many things, and where they can go is dependent on how long green units last, so I have to be extra careful about where I place anyone. At least until I can block off these planks.

Just to play it absolutely safe, when I move Gatrie off the defend tile, I move Astrid onto it. Nobody can attack her there, I think, but if I'm wrong, worst case scenario is that I lose her, and not the entire ironman.

Man, Lethe is absurdly useful. I know you can only use her half the time, but it's the first half, where things are most dangerous. By the time she's become useless, chances are so has the enemy. I was always turned off by how situational laguz felt, but there's a lot to be said for them. We'll have to see how well they keep it up, though. Being melee-locked and gauge-dependent is probably gonna feel like a bigger deal once they're no longer the highest-level units in my army. Can't wait to get my hands on the hawks, also. Between them, Marcia, Jill, Tanith and also Reyson, I'm gonna have a veritable air force. Who's gonna need that full guard? I'm gonna have enough fliers to player-phase the archers away!

I like how they actually have a battle backdrop for units fighting on the open sea, but it feels lazy, because... pegasus knights' mounts are still standing, like, a few inches deep in the water, so it really doesn't feel like an ocean.

Plus side, Marcia can double these ravens, who are slower than the ones from last map, and so together with Jill, she can take out even the ones who end their turn overboard and thus can't be attacked in melee by anyone landlocked. Because that's a thing that happens in this game, even when they're one space away. This game has borders coded between some spaces that make melee attacks impossible.

I'm going to want to be aggressive here to get the treasure, and thankfully that isn't too hard to do, mostly because I have enough tough units to take each of these chokepoints, and Lethe and Titania are mowing through most of the enemies really quickly. Once I get as much treasure as I can without getting near the boss, I'm going to kill him and hope that doesn't prematurely end it.

Apparently PoR counter works at range too. Cool, though slightly terrifying. Glad I learned about that from someone who's on my side.

One thing I don't like about how laguz gameplay works is that you don't know what their stats are going to be when they untransform. You have to look it up, which can be annoying when you're thinking of doing one last attack with their final turn before they shift back.

Alright, I managed to secure the boss without risking an early end by just surrounding him on all sides with Gatrie, Titania and Boyd. Now I should be able to get all of the remaining chests within the time limit no problem. There's actually an order you can get them in that lets you grab one per turn.

Anyway, Naesala talks and we see Nealuchi for the first time, and this conversation where Nealuchi calls him Nestling and rants about no matter how big or important he gets, he'll always be the little baby he raised... I'm not sure if this was a very clumsy attempt at humanizing Naesala way too early, or just an attempt at humor. It kinda works as the latter? I guess? Not really my thing. But anyway, the raven thieves have arrived (they've been there since the last turn, but now's the first turn they move), and since I don't need them to save time anymore, I'm having Marcia and Jill fight them.

Man, I wish those two could support. It'd be great if I could get some support bonus from them working together as they will very often be doing.

...Wait... did they just add another set of ravens as ambush spawns?

...They did, but thankfully these have absolutely no interest in attacking, so no harm done.

And now Tibarn shows up, with far more heroic music playing, though as this scene indicates, not really all that much friendlier at the moment. And Tibarn apparently can't comprehend the idea of beorc fighting each other, which I find hilarious.

I like how they use this to introduce the superhuman sight and hearing of Tibarn's two... retainers, I suppose, Janaff and Ulki. They don't really do anything with it plotwise, and really, the main payoff is like one scene later and some kinda-useful-kinda-not personal skills, but it is an interesting thing about how Tibarn can get intelligence.

Anyway, one of the ravens got a treasure, but I managed to kill him, and just in case they changed their mind about just being after the treasure, I killed them all. Some more are coming, but I might be able to finish the map early now that I just need one more treasure and the boss is nearly dead.

It was a pretty awesome haul, with the biggest ones being on the enemy ship: speedwings, an energy drop, and an occult scroll. Granted, occult skills aren't the best, and really only Ike's and a couple others are worth using, but still, nice thing to have.

I didn't end early by killing the boss, but apparently routing (or more accurately, killing everyone but one raven who then retreated) did the trick. Well, that was fast!

...Yeah, the victory theme is definitely muted here when Naesala's talking.

It gets louder once we actually get to Ike's group, which is... kind of hilarious, like the music's playing in-universe, on the ship.

Yep, now even Ike is using the term “crow” interchangeably with raven. They aren't the same species, game.

But apparently the country of Begnion is so obsessed with its apostle that an assassination might cause the entire country to fall to ruin, which... certainly explains what happened the last time an apostle was assassinated.

Man, the Begnion soldiers are zealous. Like, to a comical degree. There's a soldier reporting the apostle is missing, and it's not even implied it's that much his fault, but he's all “If I can offer up my life in repentance for--” before Tanith cuts him off and tells him to do something useful.

I wonder why Soren and Titania don't know the apostle of Begnion is a child. Like, that's not a secret, right? I'm pretty sure people know she's just a child.

And of course Ike's signature roughness in the face of royalty happens again entirely on accident this time, as we get a hilarious scene where someone who is very obviously the apostle due to cinematic cues and the like... is getting treated like a child as Ike sorta manhandles her in order to check on her injuries.

“Prepare yourselves, peasants!”

Oh my god, I love her already.

...But I'm really hoping we get to end this chapter before the big meeting in Begnion, because if I have to discuss that massive scene today, right when I'm done with this chapter... I mean, I'm early to finishing this, but still, that would feel like a bit much to throw at me just when I felt like I was done.

...Yep, looks like they're going easy on exactly how much dialogue they're throwing my way at once. Good on you, game!

...Which means we're done! And so on Monday begins the Begnion arc, from Chapter 14 to Chapter 17-4. The arc where we'll actually be promoting people.

See you then!

Stay safe, everyone!

Edited June 26, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Shadow Mir]

On 6/24/2020 at 6:50 PM, Interdimensional Observer said:

Spoiler

So Ranulf put his life on the line with the Black Knight to protect Ike and co. and he should have died from it, he took his full HP and over half extra in damage! The BK got really lucky with a 7% Crit, but that is still normally possible. Ranulf is the one cheater here, he doubled the Black Knight, when the BK should be doubling him. Geez Ranulf is pathetically weak, hope he got better in their RD rematch.

 

Not really; assuming Zelgius has the same stats then as when he duels Ike, he does all of 3 damage to Zelgius's 70 HP. (He does crit, right?). Zelgius, however, hits him for 18 damage (he's using an iron sword here, and also uses an iron sword when he duels and defeats Skrimir; let's just say that the laguz's response to the latter is apropos), and misses another attack. Let's just say he's lucky Tibarn stepped in when he did...

19 hours ago, Jotari said:

Oh yes, the game canonically has dragon laguz as more massive than what we see in game. Like when Kurthnaga shows up in Radiant Dawn everyone's like "Wow he's way bigger than a mere wyvern" despite wyvern lord wyverns looking bigger than him in battle cutscenes. Of course dragon laguz being so big does invoke the question of how big Rajaion is as he's meant to pass for a wyvern and we even see him in CGS where he looks much smaller than these red dragons.  Maybe Rajaion had dragon dwarfism?

Speaking of, I have to wonder why Ena is tiny compared to the normal red dragons in this game, whereas come Radiant Dawn, she's the exact size as them.

Edited June 26, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

But apparently the country of Begnion is so obsessed with its apostle that an assassination might cause the entire country to fall to ruin, which... certainly explains what happened the last time an apostle was assassinated.

 

Also bear in mind Sanaki has no heirs. And from what we hear no aunts or uncles either. To get a successor for her would probably be really difficult at this point.

3 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Not really; assuming Zelgius has the same stats then as when he duels Ike, he does all of 3 damage to Zelgius's 70 HP. (He does crit, right?). Zelgius, however, hits him for 18 damage (he's using an iron sword here, and also uses an iron sword when he duels and defeats Skrimir; let's just say that the laguz's response to the latter is apropos), and misses another attack. Let's just say he's lucky Tibarn stepped in when he did...

Speaking of, I have to wonder why Ena is tiny compared to the normal red dragons in this game, whereas come Radiant Dawn, she's the exact size as them.

I never noticed that (I think I've only ever gotten Nasir and I always turn on map animtations anyway). She does say the Red Dragons aside from her are much stronger granted, still it's an odd choice when you consider they probably wanted to model her like the others.

[Icelerate]

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I just realized that if you do a map without anyone dying, Soren will actually smile when giving his report. That's... that's adorable.

 

Soren and smile in the same sentence? That's absurd. 

[Eltosian Kadath]

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Apparently PoR counter works at range too. Cool, though slightly terrifying. Glad I learned about that from someone who's on my side.

As far as I know none of the enemies in Path of Radiance actually have the counter skill, so I think you are safe from that danger.

 

 

[Boomhauer007]

20 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Granted, occult skills aren't the best, and really only Ike's and a couple others are worth using, but still, nice thing to have.

Besides Aether it may as well be a sol scroll. That said, sol is actually pretty useful in this game because of the sheer amount of enemy phasing paladins do, and I always slap that first scroll on Titania immediately since Ike is length far from promoting.

[Alastor15243]

30 minutes ago, Boomhauer007 said:

Besides Aether it may as well be a sol scroll. That said, sol is actually pretty useful in this game because of the sheer amount of enemy phasing paladins do, and I always slap that first scroll on Titania immediately since Ike is length far from promoting.

Yeah, I don't like sol as much as I used to (ironmans basically killed it for me), but it would probably be handy on paladins not to protect them from death, but for a chance to not have to heal themselves come player phase.

Edited June 27, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Interdimensional Observer]

On 6/24/2020 at 8:01 PM, Alastor15243 said:

Honestly, I would add an extra chapter where they have to raid a building where the sword is said to be kept, so that getting his hands on it is actually an achievement of Ike's and not dependent on BK wanting a fair fight.

Lore-wise though, I don't like this. Ragnell isn't very special among main character legendary weapons. It isn't Falchion, Naga, it isn't the Binding Blade, nor a Sacred Twin. It's about on par with Tyrfing and maybe Durandal and Armads, beating only the Bragi Blade and Lol Katti. Ragnell is one of Altina's two swords, but it isn't really effective on anything, it pierces a blessing and nothing more, it's weak, comparatively speaking.

It made sense there would be a map specifically for the Binding Blade (+Apocalypse), not so for Ragnell in my opinion. You need Fal/Bind/Dur&Arm/Twin to defeat Medeus/Idunn(well, war dragons, since the Demon Dragon's return is uncertain until the final battle)/Nergal/Demon King, everyone should know that. The BK's & Ashy's special armor were invented more for something to make Ragnell & Ike special in the final battles.

And why would Daein be ordered to fervently protect such a blade? It's probably the finest sword around, but its loss would not instantly turn the tides against them. And knowing Ashnard's love for a strong foe, I'd think he'd partly want to lose it. Ike never names the sword, despite the BK telling him it, when he at last reveals to everyone- but I question if the commonly knowledge/frequently-told myths that must exist name Altina's blades. If they weren't, then unless the BK said "I've left the sword in Castle B I offered to your father, you need it to beat me, try to get it if you dare", would anybody say to Ike "Go get that sword, we need it!"?

Do I make sense?

...As a tangent if you take a moment and think, "wait ...what does everyone think about two national treasures of Begnion being stolen?", I can imagine an excuse. Being ancient relics used by Altina, they may not have recognized the swords are blessed to be indestructible, so I'd think Begnion would bring out the swords only on extraordinary occasions, maybe the coronation of a new Apostle-Empress alone. They'd spend the rest of their time in secure storage, wrapped up along with many other priceless treasures. It should've raised red flags someone could've stolen them given the tight security around their building- it had to be a very important temple- but its precisely for that reason they could've been overlooked as missing for a long time- who would be able to break in?

 

On 6/25/2020 at 12:33 PM, Alastor15243 said:

...And here's another thing. The game makes it sound like half of the trip passed without incident, and that we're already a month in when this chapter, and crucially, any info conversations within it, begin.

...This is going to become a problem in a second.

I suppose they really wanted a battle in the Gazaleah Sea, but at the same time wanted to discuss the events of BRR more. Instituting a time lapse after you leave base would've been an option, but b/c the narrator narrative stuff as past, they must've thought it would be awkward.

 

22 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

1: Earth element

2: Can support with both Oscar and Marcia

Oscar  ---  Kieran

I                         I

Tanith ---  Marcia

An excellent Support square, wherein everyone except Marcia gives Avoid, and all are superb mounted units. Call it "the rich get richer".

 

22 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Alright, so... this game seems to use the terms “crows” and “ravens” interchangeably, or maybe I'm missing some subtle bit of writing where only people who don't know much about them call them crows instead of ravens? I'll have to pay more attention. I just know that in this chapter, Ike called them ravens (correct) while the Begnion pegasus knight called them crows (incorrect).

It seemed to me "crow" was improper and more derogatory towards Naesala's kind. I might like the mixup, it gives fellow Laguz a term for criticizing their kind, it wouldn't make sense for Tibarn to call Naesala a "scheming sub-human".

[Alastor15243]

17 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Lore-wise though, I don't like this. Ragnell isn't very special among main character legendary weapons. It isn't Falchion, Naga, it isn't the Binding Blade, nor a Sacred Twin. It's about on par with Tyrfing and maybe Durandal and Armads, beating only the Bragi Blade and Lol Katti. Ragnell is one of Altina's two swords, but it isn't really effective on anything, it pierces a blessing and nothing more, it's weak, comparatively speaking.

It made sense there would be a map specifically for the Binding Blade (+Apocalypse), not so for Ragnell in my opinion. You need Fal/Bind/Dur&Arm/Twin to defeat Medeus/Idunn(well, war dragons, since the Demon Dragon's return is uncertain until the final battle)/Nergal/Demon King, everyone should know that. The BK's & Ashy's special armor were invented more for something to make Ragnell & Ike special in the final battles.

And why would Daein be ordered to fervently protect such a blade? It's probably the finest sword around, but its loss would not instantly turn the tides against them. And knowing Ashnard's love for a strong foe, I'd think he'd partly want to lose it. Ike never names the sword, despite the BK telling him it, when he at last reveals to everyone- but I question if the commonly knowledge/frequently-told myths that must exist name Altina's blades. If they weren't, then unless the BK said "I've left the sword in Castle B I offered to your father, you need it to beat me, try to get it if you dare", would anybody say to Ike "Go get that sword, we need it!"?

Do I make sense?

...Noooooot really. The king and his best general are damned near invincible without that sword. Merely being informed Ashnard is wearing the same type of armor would definitely make that sword a worthwhile mission objective. Also, I really don't agree that lorewise Ragnell is comparatively weak. I mean the lore itself around it is sparse, if that's what you mean, but in terms of story power level, being just about the only thing that can hurt anyone blessed by a goddess is a hell of a lot more impressive than merely having a slayer effect against something anyone can kill, which is... technically most of the legendary weapons, honestly, both in story and in gameplay.

Edited June 27, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Icelerate]

23 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

It seemed to me "crow" was improper and more derogatory towards Naesala's kind. I might like the mixup, it gives fellow Laguz a term for criticizing their kind, it wouldn't make sense for Tibarn to call Naesala a "scheming sub-human".

Wouldn't that mean that Ike is also using derogatory language? 

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Icelerate said:

Wouldn't that mean that Ike is also using derogatory language? 

Yeah, even in the last chapter, Ike said crow too.

[Icelerate]

Just now, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, even in the last chapter, Ike said crow too.

Well the writers never make it a big deal even though it does seem like derogatory language much like sub human.